No Takers

Obama’s second Inaugural Speech celebrated the theme of unity, but in doing so, it was also a sly rebuke to the divisive politics of his foes, most particularly to the conservative argument that America has devolved into a nation of “takers” not “makers.”

Those who read the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal or who follow the presses of the conservative think tanks and foundations could hear a very specific dog whistle when Obama said:

The commitments we make to each other through Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security, these things do not sap our initiative, they strengthen us. (Applause.) They do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great.

As my colleague Amy Davidson writes, this was a direct reply to the notion, increasingly popular on the right, that America has become divided between “job creators” and “moochers.” Mitt Romney was caught candidly voicing a version of this in his secretly recorded remarks to a group of wealthy political funders last summer, dismissing “forty-seven per cent” of Americans as free-loaders “who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. My job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

Obama did not go so far as to quote his defeated opponent’s forty-seven-per-cent line—that would have been gratuitous and tacky. But by referring to a “nation of takers” he took aim at even a more lasting redoubt of opposition: the corporate-funded think tanks and publicists who originated the phrase, and the politically suspect research behind it, in the first place.

“Nation of Takers” was the title of a 2012 book by Nicholas Eberstadt, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington-based think tank. It also appeared in the title of an essay by Stephen Moore—“We’ve Become a Nation of Takers, Not Makers”— that ran on the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal on April 1, 2011. Moore, a senior economics writer for the paper’s editorial page, was formerly a leading member of the ultra-free-market anti-tax group the Club for Growth.

Eberstadt’s book depicts America as facing a spending crisis precipitated by the explosion of citizens dependent upon “entitlement” programs and other forms of government spending. Eberstadt is regarded widely as a serious scholar of demographic trends; some even consider him a brilliant one. But while the book, and the divisive thinking behind it, took off in conservative circles, few stopped to look at the curious origins or ironies behind its publication.

“Nation of Takers” was published by the Templeton Press, an offshoot of the John Templeton Foundation. John Templeton, who was born in Tennessee and died in 2008, was a brilliant stock-picker and a mutual fund pioneer. But while he was a whiz at finance, and a generous philanthropist, his credentials as a scold on the subject of giving back to America are somewhat questionable, given that he renounced his U.S. citizenship back in the sixties, thus reportedly avoiding paying tens of millions in U.S. income taxes.

Obama didn’t mention the tax avoidance schemes of those who backed Romney, and indeed of Romney himself, nor of those who have financed the research that now accuses nearly half the country of shirking its duty as citizens. But by specifically taking on the divisive rhetoric of “A Nation of Takers,” he has started his second term on a note that, while communitarian, is no longer post-partisan; perhaps he is more knowing and wily about the ways of his opponents than he was four years ago.

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